Mainstream Media is Trash

Misleading headlines can affect voting.

A protest sign by NARAL Pro-Choice America (which has changed its name to Reproductive Freedom for All): “Abortion is a Human Right”

I recently read a post in Jessica Valenti’s Substack Abortion, Every Day, in which she writes about numerous mainstream media platforms using the misleading headline, “Donald Trump says he won’t block the abortion pill.” This comment is accompanied by a graphic showing the headlines and their media outlets. Some readers don’t even read more than the headline — which in this case is unfortunate.

With the intention of writing to these news outlets, I wrote them down: The Hill, Axios, Semafor, the Independent, Faux News (unsurprisingly), and USA Today. I didn’t bother writing to Faux News. The first news source I contacted was The New York Times, without looking at my list — but they’ve been notoriously enabling of fascists and transphobic, so they deserved a letter, too.

In hindsight, the letter to the editor I wrote to mainstream media should have been two letters: one chastising them for their misleading headlines about the narcissistic psychopaths’ stance on abortion, and the other on how the 2025 Project should be front-age news. Therefore I have split the letter and am publishing it in two parts on Medium, beginning with this one.

Here is what I wrote in response to the misleading headlines: